Mama Jones
by Monster Mads
Summary: Three times Alex Rider landed in Mrs. Jones's office, and one he didn't.


**Note** : This story diverges after Crocodile Tears b/c I like Jack!

 **Alt description** : At age 16, Alex signs on for full-time employment with MI6. Jack moves back to America, Alan Blunt wisely retires, and Mrs. Jones embraces her job as Alex's boss… in unexpected ways.

0o0o0o

 **Mama Jones**

 _Knock, knock, knock._

Half-buried beneath a formidable pile of paperwork, Mrs. Jones didn't have the energy to respond. Her signature no longer looked like her own. In fact, it no longer looked like anything. In the same way that a word repeated enough times loses its meaning, her own signature had become just that: a mess of loops and lines, mocking her with its utter artlessness. A perfect metaphor for the invisible ball-and-chain that bound her to her desk.

 _Tulip Jones. Tuilq Joucs. Jloiqtuyz. Tdltdpaqjuoeusszszzsz_

Oh how she hated it.

 _Knock, knock, knock!_

A quick glance at the clock on the wall told her it was well past dinnertime. At nearly ten o' clock on a Friday night, no one should've been bothering her for her attention. The frosted glass prevented her from making out anything more than a vague shape behind the door. _Who is that?_

"… Come–" She cleared her throat, which was hoarse from disuse. "Come back later!"

 _Knockknockknockknock–_

"Oh," the noise escaped her, as if the identity of the stranger had suddenly become the most obvious thing in the world. Taking a page out of Alan Blunt's book, she schooled her expression into one of cool detachment in preparation for unlocking the door. It was pointless, of course. While few could get Mrs. Jones to smile even if they were trying, there was one person who made it impossible for her to keep a straight face, and that person was entering the room after the door unlocked with a quiet _click._

"Bad news," Alex announced solemnly, smacking the door shut behind him. "It's about my hair."

At seventeen years old, Alex had been working full-time for MI6 for just over a year. This usually saw him outside of the country and thus, safely divorced from Mrs. Jones's thoughts.

… Most of the time. In reality, somebody mentioned his name to her every other week. Much of the secrecy surrounding Alex's employment had been washed away in the wake of SO's annoyingly inquisitive workforce. Seeing a teenager navigate the Royal and General as though he'd been there before was surprising enough, but finding out he _actually_ _worked there?_

Alex was lucky he spent so much time abroad.

"When did you get back?" she asked with a frown.

"Maybe an hour ago?" he replied, scratching his head. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Depends."

"You _would_ say that."

"Alex…" she complained.

Alex fell into the chair across from her, fixing her with a pleading look. Up close, it was much easier to see the dark rings around his eyes. "Is my hair turning gray?"

Without waiting for an objection, Alex leaned forward so Mrs. Jones was forced to inspect his head.

"… No." After the short-lived examination, she sounded understandably annoyed. "Alex, you're blond. Do you realize I'm working right now?"

Sitting up, he stared at her for a few seconds before responding, "I think I'm going colour-blind."

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Uh…" He lifted a hand to count off his fingers, hesitating after the fourth. "Can't remember."

"Did you sleep on the flight home?"

"Couldn't. Still can't."

"You're talking kind of fast…"

"It's the drugs."

" _Drugs?"_

He started nodded and then just… didn't stop. "That last school you sent me to – everybody was jacked up on study drugs. Adderall, Ritalin, Dexedrine, you name it."

Mrs. Jones's expression became pained. It was difficult to act surprised when the same school boasted some of the highest academic performance averages in all of Europe. Still, remaining apathetic became much more of a challenge when Alex was practically vibrating three feet across from her. While he _was_ known to go to extreme lengths to keep his cover under wraps (and often praised for it), this wasn't the first time she was left questioning the ethics involved with allowing a teenage boy to go so far.

"How do you feel?" she asked diplomatically.

"I feel great. Kind of paranoid but–" He froze. "… Did you hear that?"

Mrs. Jones flat look stood in for a reply.

 _Knock, knock–_

 _Just my luck._ "Come back la–"

The door opened anyway, revealing the frazzled face of the sixth-floor security guard. "Sorry to interrupt, but have you seen a…"

He broke off at the sight of Alex's wide-eyed, insomniac stare, and audibly swallowed. Mrs. Jones reached up to rub her face.

"It's fine," she said. "I'm guessing you're the one he slipped past?"

"I – I…"

"For an organization dedicated to national security, you really ought to…"

" _Silence,_ Alex."

Alex shut up.

"What's your name?" she asked the guard.

"It's Ma–"

"Forget it," she cut him off. "Finish your shift and don't come back. Now be on your way."

With that, "Ma" pulled the door shut behind him, so soft it hardly made a sound. Both of them experienced the same visual of the man sadly slinking away. Alex turned to face her with his eyebrows raised.

"That was cold," Alex remarked. "Poor Malcolm."

Mrs. Jones was _not_ in the mood to be lectured by the source of her rapidly-developing headache. "How do _you_ know his name?"

"How could I not? Everyone knows Malcolm."

"You're barely ever here!"

"Exactly. What's your excuse?"

Internal pressure gauge rising, Mrs. Jones prepared to strike him down with a comment about the difference between chief executives and HR managers. Alas, Alex had already moved on from the subject, aiming his intense scrutiny at the overflowing stack of papers between them.

"Uh, Mrs. Jones…" he began reproachfully, "have you looked at your signature recently?"

Following his line of sight, she instantly spotted the cause for concern – a barely recognizable bird's nest of black ink. Mrs. Jones froze. "I thought that was just my imagination..."

It was Alex's turn to look pained. "Are you okay?"

That was not a question that she got very often. Almost anyone else would've been terrified by the prospect of even suggesting such a thing, least of all to her face. Mrs. Jones was quite strict about maintaining her iron image.

… Most of the time.

"Me? _You're_ the one that's–"

"When was the last time _you_ slept?" he interrupted, eyeing her critically.

Unable to hide her exasperation any longer, Mrs. Jones returned to the real basis for their argument: "Why are you _here,_ Alex?"

He blinked at her, uninspired, as if the question either answered itself or simply had no answer. After two months spent investigating the subliminal teachings of a highly secretive international school, Alex should've been leaping at the chance to finally go home.

Of course… that would require him to still have one. With Jack's recent departure back to America, Alex no longer had anyone waiting for him at his immaculate house in Chelsea.

The realization hit her harder than it should've.

"Don't you want me to debrief?" he asked, the picture of innocence.

It was closer to ten-thirty now, and Mrs. Jones was running on three hours of sleep. Still, she replied,

"… Sure."

0o0o0o

* * *

By the time Alex turned nineteen, his biggest asset was no longer his age. It was his impossibly smooth modus operandi. Within MI6, opinions were divided. After the disbelief wore off, most began to celebrate Alex's precociousness, though envy and distrust also snaked their way into the mix. When word got out that his last name was Rider – "–as in _, John and Ian Rider_ –" the real fun began. Mrs. Jones was forced to field a range of poorly-disguised attempts to find out more about him. For a time, it was all people were willing to talk about. How could someone so young be so talented? Was such a thing hereditary? Was he recruited as a child? Did MI6 employ children?

Interest died down in the months between his reported successes, which usually involved scenarios that defied slim odds in addition to the laws of death and/or physics. But anytime an operative returned from a mission with Alex, the conversation was revived once more, largely due to SO's tendency to disseminate gossip faster than a group of schoolgirls. Far sooner than she would've liked, Mrs. Jones found herself debriefing one Ben Daniels, counted chief among the legions of fans Alex had accumulated since his induction into full-time employment.

"Other than that hitch-up with the pressure-cooker, I'd say it went well," Ben concluded with one of his perfect smiles. He'd built up a reputation of his own over the years – partly fueled by his early success in the SAS, though more generally for his charismatic charm. Of course, in Mrs. Jones's eyes, Ben's _real_ talent was his ability to go from let's-be-best-friends to any-last-words on demand and without question.

"Excellent," said Mrs. Jones, anticipating Ben's next move as though the two were playing chess rather than having a conversation. Ben nodded.

"That's about it. All my paperwork is in, too."

 _Stop kissing up and just say it already!_

Ben cleared his throat. "So… I heard Alex Rider just got back from India…?"

There was really no point in asking him how he'd attained the information. If he was going to the trouble of asking, then that meant he was also aware of the blanket gag order she'd issued to the masses on all things Alex Rider. Mrs. Jones gifted him with a dead look. "And?"

"Is he coming in today?" Ben asked with another smile.

"You're not to speak to him," she ordered on the spot, watching with mild satisfaction as the smile slid off his face.

"What? Why not?"

"The last thing I want is for Alex to catch on to this strange obsession you've all developed with him," she shot back. "He's got enough to deal with as is."

"Oh, come on! Unlike most people, _I_ actually know him!"

She raised a dubious eyebrow. Ben hadn't spoken to Alex since their mission in Australia five years prior. "Do you now?"

"Well… better than anyone else around here," he defended feebly. "Don't you think Alex might start to wonder why everyone ignores him all the time? He's a growing boy – it could impact his self-esteem –"

"He's nineteen," she deadpanned.

"O-okay, well, there you go! He's nineteen, don't you think he's mature enough to–"

"It's really got nothing to do with _Alex's_ maturity," she cut in, cold as ice. Mrs. Jones didn't need to vocalize the subtext for Ben to get the message, nor did Ben have to _physically_ pout for Mrs. Jones to experience the disappointment rolling off him in waves.

As a last-ditch effort, Ben took the direct route: "Do you really think Alex is better off if no one here utters a word to him?"

Mrs. Jones slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose. When the light caught them, Ben temporarily lost sight of her eyes. "I know why you lot are interested in him. You want to know how he stays so focused."

Ben gazed across at her earnestly, saying nothing.

"Well, _I_ don't want anything to break that focus. _Understood?_ "

When Mrs. Jones ended a sentence with the word _understood,_ there was really only one direction to go in, and Ben Daniels wisely chose to take it. He slipped out the door in much the same fashion as Malcolm the security guard, leaving Mrs. Jones alone to ponder her thoughts. After a period that might've been five or forty-five minutes, a knock at the door broke her out of her reverie.

 _For the love of_ all _that is_ holy _… If this is another so-called professional with a framed picture of Alex in his bedroom closet –_

The door swung inward, alerting Mrs. Jones to the fact that she'd forgotten to lock it.

"Oh hey, your door's open. That's unusual."

"I knew you were coming," she lied seamlessly, taking in Alex's unharmed appearance with a sense of relief. He'd even acquired a tan… though he may have also simply not yet had the chance to shower. Alex had made a strange habit of going straight from the airport to the bank, provided no one forced him to visit a hospital in between. "You look well."

"That's nice," Alex replied, settling into the chair opposite of her and stretching out his legs. It was a direct break from the stoic professionalism that most agents treated her to, and yet another way that Alex demonstrated his complete disregard for protocol. "I mean, I may or may not have radiation poisoning, but if it's a compliment I'll take it."

"Alex," she sighed in what had turned into basic routine.

"Kidding, kidding. Kind of." He coughed into his fist. "So, you ready?"

"Wait. I want to ask you something first."

Mrs. Jones would be lying if she refused to acknowledge the impact Ben's words had on her. Certainly it felt like a safer bet to keep Alex away from the corrupting influence of the general populace, but was _Alex_ suffering for it? For someone who'd just spent five straight months on a high-stakes mission in a foreign country, he certainly didn't _seem_ strung-out…

"How are you doing?" she asked. What she really wanted to ask him was, " _Are you happy?"_ though naturally, that was out of the question.

"I'm fine, I suppose. Kind of hungry."

Having missed her mark entirely, Mrs. Jones switched tactics and tried once more: "Are you glad to be back in London?"

"… I guess?" He was giving her a weird look. "Why?"

"What is it you do outside of work?"

"Um…" He scratched his head, pausing to pull a small twig out of his hair. They both stared at it for a moment before Alex tossed it into the bin beside her desk. "Not much."

"Do you enjoy being sent abroad?"

"Sure. Traveling's always fun."

Now, for her most daring question of all… "And Ms. Starbright? Do you regret parting with her?"

Alex paused.

"That was years ago," he responded slowly. "What's this all about?"

It was a spectacularly evasive answer, though he did have a point – bringing up Jack was no casual affair. Mrs. Jones hadn't forgotten how reserved Alex had become in the months following her departure, nor was she ignorant to the obvious discomfort her name triggered in Alex. She examined him for a moment longer, doing her best to gauge his emotional response. Her own reply was purposefully aloof.

"You've been working here for three years now. I simply wish to know how you are managing."

"You want to know if I like my job," Alex surmised.

 _Close enough._ Mrs. Jones nodded.

"Well… I don't really know what I would be doing otherwise, so…"

He trailed off, offering little more on the subject. Mrs. Jones contemplated his words with something akin to disbelief. It was rapidly becoming clear that Alex had absolutely no life outside of MI6. Could it be that _that_ was the secret to Alex's dedication – a nonexistent inner world? Was that healthy? Didn't it _bother_ him?

"I mean, it's nice to know that I'm helping people," he added.

"Helping people," she repeated blankly. As a description for Alex's impact, it was woefully inadequate. She had to wonder if he was merely humble, or completely out of touch with reality. Both options seemed equally likely.

The glazed-over look in her eyes was clearly taking its toll on him. He shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Maybe that wasn't the answer you were looking for…"

 _Well,_ I _don't want anything to break that focus,_ her own words silently echoed. In the three years since Alex made things official with MI6, he hadn't taken a single vacation. He was always sent elsewhere within a few days of his return, oftentimes by request.

Perhaps 'focus' was not the right word.

"Your birthday," she said. "Isn't it coming up in a few days?"

Judging by his reaction, this was news to him. "What day is it?"

"Today's the ninth."

"Oh… wow, you're right. I hadn't noticed."

"Twenty, is it?"

He nodded.

"Will you celebrate?"

"If I do, will you bake me a cake?"

"I could have one made-to-order."

"Um." The honest response momentarily threw him for a loop. "I wasn't being serious, Mrs. Jones… I don't need a cake. In fact, I probably would've never remembered if you hadn't brought it up."

"You ought to go out and enjoy yourself. God knows we pay you well enough for it."

"Yeah, well, I earn it," he shot back playfully, and though Mrs. Jones would never admit it, the effect his light-hearted tone had on her was just short of therapeutic. "What do you care what I do on my birthday, anyway? Don't try to tell me _you_ throw yourself a party every year?"

"That's different," she said stiffly.

"Is it? Is it _really?"_

 _Yes!_ she almost snapped, startling herself with the strength of her own sentiment. It was _different_ because Mrs. Jones was a lonely old workaholic with no family or friends and a job she'd sacrificed all other forms of living for, while _he…_

Alex blinked at her with a look of barely-perceptible smugness. All of a sudden Mrs. Jones's chest started aching – _really_ aching. She reached up to rub the area above her ribcage, right around where her heart might've been had she not misplaced it one too many times over the years. Alex's eyes followed the motion cautiously.

"Are you okay?" he asked, not bothering to hide his concern.

 _Again?_ she thought. "Fine."

"Is your chest bothering you?"

"Really," she said, dropping the hand and clearing her throat. "It's nothing."

He was right. It _wasn't_ different. She and Alex were public servants in the fullest sense. So embroiled were they in their roles that they regularly forgot their own birthdays, their own signatures, their own individual identities beyond that which defined them within MI6. Alex was so far gone that he didn't even realize his lack of a personal life was cause for reassessment.

But was he _happy?_

0o0o0o

* * *

Between Alex's twentieth and twenty-second birthday, he completed no less than seven missions internationally, though depending on who you were talking to, the number varied. It was rumoured he'd visited every continent at least twice, _including_ Antarctica, and that was among the least audacious. Evidently, Mrs. Jones's gag order only made Alex that much more interesting. Soon all sorts of conspiracy theories formed: that he was a double agent, trained from birth; that his DNA had been tampered with, like a human GMO; that his entire existence was an elaborate hoax perpetuated to motivate the populace; and so on. Few were stupid enough to believe any of it, but it made for entertaining water-cooler talk, and so it persisted indefinitely despite Mrs. Jones's frigid response to any such talk within her vicinity.

She was walking down the hallway when she overheard the latest from Britain's best and brightest: "… but Jacobsen was knocked off because they saw through him _instantly._ With Alex, they recognized him as their own. He used to be a mercenary. Didn't you know that?"

Her heels clicked against the granite floors as she walked, fast and relentless.

"As if! He's barely old enough to drink!"

 _Clack clack clack clack…_

"It's true. Ask Linus. He has this whole story about an attempt on the boss that he _swears_ is… wait. Does that sound like–"

Three pairs of wide, fearful eyes landed on her the second she rounded the corner. Before she could say a word, the elevator doors split open, and in their haste to escape, the three men almost tripped over Alex Rider himself.

"Oh, um, sorry–" one stammered, breaking off and clamping his jaw shut as he remembered Mrs. Jones's rule about talking to Alex. The other two merely traded places with him in eerie silence, inspiring twin frowns from Alex and Mrs. Jones.

"Don't worry about it..." said Alex, watching as the other man hurried to press the close-doors button, vanishing from sight a moment later. The ensuing silence gave Mrs. Jones just enough time to appreciate the finer colours blooming inside the bruise on Alex's jaw, which came accompanied by a bandage taped dangerously close to his left eye.

Dignified as ever, she reached into her pocket to retract a small tin of peppermints, tapping two out onto her palm and offering one to Alex.

"I shouldn't," said Alex. "I've got my own candy."

He produced a bottle of prescription pills, rattling it for effect, and was treated to a withering look in return. Mrs. Jones waved for him to follow. He did, albeit with a slight limp.

In Mrs. Jones's office, Alex went over the details of his latest mission, a joint operation with the CIA. Everything checked out except for Alex's injuries. They seemed altogether too severe for his retelling of events. It was only supposed to be a surveillance mission – certainly nowhere near as perilous as some of the other assignments she'd given him – yet for some reason _this_ was the one he came back injured from. _Why?_

When asked, Alex looked embarrassed. "I was careless. Lily was gathering information from a target and I showed up before he succumbed to the sedative she'd administered."

Mrs. Jones raised an eyebrow. "Lily?"

"Agent Williams," Alex quickly amended. Lily Williams was the name of the American agent sent alongside him. Although Mrs. Jones let the issue fall with little more than a nod, by the time Alex was gone she was looking up Joe Byrne's number to fill in the blanks. This conversation proved much more enlightening. Compared with Lily Williams's candid report, Alex's was a paired down, black-and-white version.

"Well, I sent her with him on purpose, of course. She's positively lovely, and I suspected the mission would be a sedentary one. Just figured Alex might enjoy her company."

"That doesn't explain his condition," Mrs. Jones sniffed, as though Joe had borrowed her favourite jumper and returned it damaged.

"Doesn't it?" said Joe slyly. "Lily was _seducing_ a target in order to gain information from him. Her plan involved putting the target to sleep with a drug she'd rubbed on her skin, which meant she had to initiate intercourse. According to her, Alex broke in and the two got into a fight before she could follow through. A little unprofessional, that."

"I find that hard to believe," she muttered. 'Alex' and 'unprofessional' were rarely used in the same sentence.

"If you think _that's_ unprofessional, don't let me tell you what came next."

Mrs. Jones blinked. "Ah…"

Joe snickered. "Yes. _Ah._ Lily claims Alex fell madly in love with her."

 _In a month?_ she thought. Then again, if what Joe Byrne said was true, then it _would_ explain why her star operative would choose to abandon a good plan in favour of getting his skull knocked around. In fact… it was the only thing that _did_ explain it.

"I wouldn't have known," she admitted. Alex had made a special effort to keep that particular detail under wraps. "It appears your agent was far more forthcoming than mine."

"That's not good," said Joe, sounding amused. "Withholding information… kid's getting bold, isn't he?"

Mrs. Jones winced at the not-so-subtle inference: That Alex's dishonesty was the direct result of her soft spot for him. "Indeed. I'll speak with him at once."

"Go easy on him now," Joe added. "It isn't exactly a critical detail, and I can guess why he wouldn't have wanted to mention it to you."

 _To you_. Her eyebrow twitched. "I beg your pardon?"

Sensing that she'd taken his words personally, Joe hastened to brush the whole thing off. _"_ You know how young men are; utterly angst-ridden. No doubt he's still reeling from the rejection."

Again, the idea seemed at odds with her own experience: Alex had never struck her as angst-ridden, even during his brief phase as a junior terrorist. Misguided, yes. Confused, very. Distrustful, naturally. When it came to Alex, she was sure she'd seen it all, or at least more than anyone else had. "He seemed fine when I spoke with him."

"Maybe he was embarrassed," Joe said lazily. Mrs. Jones could see the man in her mind's eye perfectly: waving a hand through the air as he spoke, reclined in his deluxe office chair with a crystal glass inches away from his own mound of paperwork.

"I'm surprised you're still talking about this with me," she mused. "Don't you have things to do?"

"Be that as it may, I _do_ love it when you flash that maternal instinct of yours. So few believe me when I insist it exists."

Her voice was grating: "Goodbye, Mr. Byrne."

"Toodaloo, Tuli–"

Mrs. Jones promptly hung up.

0o0o0o

* * *

At the ripe age of twenty-three years old, Alex was breaking records for his work within MI6. The sheer volume of missions he accomplished was staggering to say the least. On top of that, complexity did not appear to be a factor – Alex succeeded where others died trying. He'd probably be tap dancing his way back into the Royal and General even if Mrs. Jones sent him out with his hands tied behind his back. It was slightly ridiculous.

"No wonder the new recruits think he's a myth," Ben Daniels said with a cackle. Mrs. Jones had just finished glossing over the details of Alex's latest mission, which involved communication via carrier pigeon, hang gliding through the Alps, exposing an illegal mining operation, and a brush with death when an avalanche very nearly swallowed him whole. "So you're saying he escaped the avalanche by _hang gliding off the edge of the mountain?_ Is he… uh, _alright?"_

"He's fine." By anyone else's standards, he was better than fine. But other people's standards did not concern Tulip Jones. "The reason I'm telling you this is because I want you to take over the case."

"What?" Ben squeaked. "Why me?"

Mrs. Jones did not look impressed by the question. "Is there a problem?"

"I'm just – I'm confused, that's all. If Alex is fine, then why…?"

As reasonable as Ben's reaction was, Mrs. Jones had neither the patience nor motivation to explain it all to him. "There's very little left to be done – mostly PR at this point, with some basic follow-up in the local townships…"

"Alex is just as good at PR as I am," Ben pointed out. "It's not standard procedure to have another agent come in and finish someone else's mission. What's going on? Has he finally gotten burnt out?"

"I'm sorry. Is there a sign behind me that says 'State the obvious and question my authority'?"

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees over the course of Mrs. Jones's retort.

"Er–"

"I do _not_ need you demanding answers from me for your Alex Rider-themed newsletter," she broke in, voice crisp. "Alex is taking a vacation. That's all you need to know."

"Va – vacation?" he echoed blankly. "As in… sandy beaches, grass skirts…?"

"The _mission,_ Agent Daniels."

"I'm sorry! The mission – I'm listening."

"As I was saying…"

Technically she'd lied. Was it still considered a vacation if the person had no choice in the matter? Debatable. At that point, 'paid leave' became the more accurate term, though the last thing she needed was Ben Daniels crusading through the Royal and General trying to figure out why Alex was placed on mandatory leave after eight years of insanely successful service. It was fodder for a full-on conspiracy, and she knew it.

With that, the decision was made to keep the true nature of Alex's 'vacation' under tight wraps, lest anyone discover the rationale behind it. There were people out there just _waiting_ for her to slip up, to make a mistake, to let a crack in her armor show, and even _she_ wasn't 100% about this one. Alex Rider was hands-down their best agent – sharp, cunning, resourceful, and seemingly without bounds. Most wouldn't _dream_ of tampering with whatever formula made it all possible. And yet…

When Mrs. Jones thought of Alex, his accomplishments were not first to mind. Instead, nearly all of her memories led her back into her office, to that aging plush chair opposite of hers, where he regularly peppered his reports with jokes or comments to try to get a rise of her. In these memories, he could be anywhere from fourteen to seventeen to twenty-three, in varying states of dress and mental duress, sometimes clean shaven and sometimes with a bit of fuzz along his jaw. She'd watched him grow up, steadily getting taller and filling out his slender build until he'd turned into something vaguely yet undeniably _adult,_ and she was _proud,_ damn it – proud that he'd managed to stay so _human_ throughout his time in Special Operations.

Of course, there was more to being human than good character forged through fire – it came with all sorts of caveats. There was simply no way to turn a social animal into a tool without suffering losses, and Alex was no exception. He was incredibly lonely. It became more and more apparent as he got older – less in his reports and more in his patterns of behaviour, where Mrs. Jones observed a tendency to grow attached very quickly, sometimes to the point of blind devotion or self-sacrifice.

'Troubling' didn't even begin to cut it. _It's a security flaw,_ she told herself. _A glaring weakness, and only a matter of time before someone exploits it._ What exactly would that look like? A failed mission? Dead personnel? _Alex, dead?_

She'd spent enough time late at night running away from that scenario, where the famed Alex Rider was reduced to a body in a box, a generic eulogy, a distant memory that had to be forced from her thoughts so she could continue to function. _No._ Mrs. Jones violently rejected such a future, opting instead to design a different one, where Alex lived a fulfilling personal life alongside his career as a spy.

Realistically, there was no telling if such a future was possible. Maybe for people like them, work and love would always be mutually exclusive. Or maybe, like her, he would learn to love and be loved in return, only to have it brutally torn from his grasp. Who could say?

 _To hell with it,_ she thought, because that kind of thinking was above her paygrade, and anyway, it was enough just to look at the facts. At age fifteen, Alex had made the same decision she'd made at age thirty-three, and eight years down the road he'd done more for Britain than anyone would ever know. After all that time and hard work… didn't he, too, deserve a shot at happiness?

So maybe it would take a little push. If there was one person who wasn't afraid to push, it was Mrs. Jones.

The next time she got a call from Joe Byrne, it was early autumn and the trees had already begun to turn brilliant shades of red and orange.

"Sorry," she said. "He's unavailable."

"Oh, really? What's the latest?"

"Nothing special. He's staying in London for the next few weeks."

"Isn't that out of the ordinary?"

"Quite."

"Trying to keep him closer to home, now, are you?" Joe's tone was teasing.

"If only he saw it that way," she replied, glancing out the window at the busy streets below. Liverpool Street was teeming with life – people in clusters or pairs, holding hands and exchanging touches, as beautiful as a moving painting.

"He isn't happy in London?" asked Joe, for even CIA executives were not immune to the Alex-mania that had taken SO by storm.

"No," she replied, remembering the many times Alex had fought her about breaks between missions, as though coming home were the equivalent of a long layover in an airport. No, he wasn't happy in London, and it made perfect sense when she thought about it: Stillness was no friend to denial. The silence of an empty apartment was stagnant and cloying, like the smell of a hospital; pervasive yet impossible to ignore. It magnified everything.

"He's not," Mrs. Jones confessed.

If home was where the heart is, then perhaps all Alex needed was a little time – with no place left to hide.

"… But he will be."

0o0o0o

* * *

A/N: Hi there! So I really wanted to write a story from Mrs. Jones's perspective, and while I was writing it, it just sorta… turned into a prequel for All in the Faculty, haha. There is a scene in AitF's final chapter that loosely ties into this one-shot, so if you plan on reading that when it's posted, hopefully this one makes it that much better. That said, I'd like to think this fic stands pretty well on its own, too.

Motherly Jones is my spirit animal. I have no shame. *cough*

Let me know if you see any typos, and of course… _please review!_

Happy holidays everyone :)

Maddy


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